Spotify Banned by Oxford University

The premier school of the bright minds is not so bright after the network administration decides to ban UK’s top music download and streaming site Spotify.

The top P2P site of UK has been extensively used by students who are stressed out by the load of studies they go through every day and the move has come as a downer for them. The university takes the stand by explaining the actions as “necessary” for the stability of the network.

Oxford University provides the students with high speed broadband Internet on campus and in hostels but the extensive use of P2P applications by the students has somewhat hampered the bandwidth usage.

The University says that due to heavy traffic because of P2P applications, other students (who actually are there to study) face difficulties using the Internet.

My question to Oxford would be that why in the heck you charge an exuberant amount of money if you cannot provide facilities to the students. I know that P2P is bad but Spotify is not illegal, it’s a paid subscription based service and someone paying for a service has the right to use it. As for the bandwidth, my recommendation would be to wire up the entire University with fiber network so that there is no issue for students regarding the bandwidth. Now a days an STM1 (128Mbps) costs roughly around £8,000 and catering to 10,000 students a STM4 (512Mbps) should be good enough bandwidth. For local network access, the fiber optic should be good enough as it will provide virtually unlimited bandwidth. Install Gigabit routers and separate the bandwidth for hostels to the university halls. It’s all about smart networking and nothing else.

Next up, we may see a ban on Multi-player Online Gaming, or is it banned already…?